Another War, Another Generation
by David Lloyd
Summary: A short story taking place in the Warhammer 40000 universe introducing Markus Atticus, a member of the 8th Correlian Planetary Defense Force regiment from the Erindanus Sector. While the regiment battles orks, Markus begins to realize his potential.


Warhammer 40000 Lightning Templars: Another Battle, Another Generation

(Author Notes at the bottom)

_What a pretty day_, Markus thought. The sky was a perfect blue, not too dark, not too bright. A few white wisps made their way across the sky, providing a light shade. The grass felt cool on his back, and a light breeze blew, cooling his face. _It'd be a really nice day for a ride on my bike…_

Even the high pitched ringing that filled his ears was comforting. As it slowly dulled, it was replaced by silence, tranquil.

A missile streaked across the sky, its scream breaking the silence, and dragging Markus from his paradise.

"Mark! Mark!" a voice yelled. A figure jumped down over Markus, his face directly over Markus'. "Come on, get up man, we gotta go!"

Markus was stunned, his skull spinning inside his head. He tried to sit up, but fell sideways. Markus knew the feeling, like he had tried to stand up too quickly after laying on the floor after some heavy drinking with the buddies. He moved his hand out to steady himself. The man who had yelled at Markus grabbed his arm and helped pull him up.

"Let's move, CO is moving us back to the 2nd perimeter!" the man yelled at Markus as he helped Markus walk. Markus nodded in agreement, his head still spinning too much to muster a response. Stabilizing himself, Markus let go of the man. He stumbled to the left slightly, his leg swinging out to catch himself. His head began to clear, and he began to run, following the man. Bullets sounded behind him, and missiles streaked over his head and exploded before him, but the adrenaline rush proved great enough to tune out these distractions.

Before him was a trench, filled with soldiers from the 3rd Regiment of the Sapphire Guard Planetary Defense Force, his regiment. He dove into the trench. Turning around to face the battlefield, he saw the enemy.

A horde of hundreds of green beings, roughly humanoid, but larger and bulkier, charged their way across the battlefield. Those with large axe-like weapons led the way, firing small pistols in the general direction of the trench with little accuracy. Farther back, others wielded huge guns, which wrapped around the bodies of the creatures. Firing wildly in the direction of the trench, their accuracy was still terrible, but more than made up for by the volume of fire.

Markus reached towards his back, looking for his lasgun rifle, but grabbed nothing but air. The man who had helped Markus jabbed Markus' arm. "Here," the man said, handing Markus his rifle, "I picked this up back there. You'll need it."

Markus took the rifle and nodded as a larger explosion directly in front of the lines covered his face in dirt. Turning around he saw the creatures charging towards the line, furiously cutting down the few poor souls too foolish or too wounded to make it back to the trench. Markus aimed his lasgun out of the trench, and began to fire towards the advancing beasts. His first shot fired high, but his second found its target. The green monster, hit in the head by the laser, reeled and fell, his eye socket having been bored through and his brain evaporated. Firing towards more creatures, he and those around him held off the first wave of the advancing green tide.

"Hold your positions, and make sure your bayonets are fixed! We're making our stand here!" a voice yelled from behind Markus. A man in a junior officers uniform slid into the trench behind Markus, with a laspistol in one hand and a small sword-like chainsaw in the other. "I've just received word from HQ! Reinforcements are coming, but they're about fifteen minutes out! Hold them here for that long, and we'll be able to laugh in the mess halls tonight!" No one questioned the young officer, and across the line the guardsmen fired with greater vigor, their salvation was potentially nigh.

The guardsmen, lined shoulder to shoulder in their trench, weapons aimed at the charging horde, fired, their guns as one weapon, holding their position. While Markus and his brethren lay, belly down, in the trench, firing, the young officer stood, his chainsaw blade raised high in defiance of the charging beasts, screaming orders to his men and curses at his enemies. His pistol fired searing beams towards the charging monsters, finding their mark an impressive amount of times. For an interminable amount of time, the men laid there, firing.

It felt like an eternity.

Periodically Markus would try to count the seconds he was in the trench. _1…2…3…_ A few seconds later a precariously close greenskin would draw his attention, ire, and fire, and he would lose count. _Shit…1…2…3…Why aren't they here yet? _ It felt like an eternity. He guessed he had counted at least several hundred seconds between all his restarts. Counting the time he hadn't been counting, it had to have been nine hundred seconds. Or had it? Markus second guessed himself, who knows how fast he had really been counting. Maybe ten seconds on his count was only one second in real life. Maybe it was the other way, maybe each second he counted was ten in the real world. Maybe the reinforcements were late. Maybe they didn't exist at all.

_No, none of that matters. Hold your ground…don't give an inch,_ a voice in his head told him. The voice was calm, resolute, everything Markus wasn't at this moment. Yet it had his voice, and it gave him confidence. Aiming with renewed vigor, he fired beam after beam into the beasts, landing shot after shot.

The hulking beasts began to reach the line at points. Markus could see the creatures jumping into the trenches, their axes raised high. The line was beginning to collapse around them, and Markus saw out of the corner of his eye two creatures jump into the trench to his left, one decapitating a terrified soldier, and the other planting his axe firmly in the shoulder of another soldier. The young officer leapt into action, firing a beam into the head of the first beast, liquefying the entire left half of its head. The second beast, seeing his friend die, leapt at the officer slicing with his axe. The officer calmly sidestepped the slice, swiftly raising his laspistol and firing it point blank into the creature's eye socket. It was as though the officer had been trained to do this, like he had had centuries of experience that belied his age.

Two more monsters jumped into the trench between the officer and Markus. Markus turned to face them, aiming his lasgun towards the monsters.

Suddenly, time slowed down.

The monsters raised their axes unnaturally slowly in defiance of the young officer and Markus' resistance. Markus wheeled his lasgun, aiming directly at the ugly beasts head. It was large, with a smaller cranium than jaw and had pointed ears. It's teeth were large, many of them being truly fangs. Everything was a sickly shade of puke green, save its teeth, which, to his surprise, were pure white.

_I wonder what kind of dentists these things have to keep their teeth that clean, _Markus mused. He pulled the trigger to his lasgun, a superheated bolt of focused lightning ripping through the mouth of the beast and exploding out the back of its cranium. _Almost a shame to do that, heh._

_ Wait a minute, am I laughing in the middle of this hell? _Markus thought as he watched the young officer across from his put a las-bullet through the other beast's head. Markus turned around, bringing his lasgun to bear, and within an instant fired off two more las-bullets. Before Markus could even register why he had pulled the trigger, two more orks, in the middle of a leap towards the trench onto several terrified soldiers, had their heads drilled through with the pure energy of the las-bullets, their last fleeting moment of consciousness, or whatever the hell these beasts had that passed for it, exiting their brain directly after the beam of energy. _Am I enjoying this?_ _Why am I so excited? I should be fucking terrified._

The defense line was gone, its last fleeting bastions of warriors fleeing from it in any direction that could prolong the lives of its inhabitants by another few moments. In the trench, only two warriors remained, Markus himself and the young officer. Within an instant, they found themselves back to back, firing anything and everything their frail bodies had left, infusing each bullet with their anger, hate, fear, and will.

"So, you have a name?" the officer asked Markus as he fired a las-bullet through another monster's head.

"Markus, sir. And if I might be so bold, what is your name sir?" Markus responded as he picked up one of the monster's discarded axes, shifting his lasgun to his right hand, and chucked the axe into a charging creature's head.

"Platoon Commander Damien Kaiser, though Damien will suffice here. Well, Markus, looks like we're the only ones left on the line. What say we go out with style?" Damien said as he sunk his chainsaw blade into a particularly large beast with a mechanical arm that was easily as big as each of them.

"I'd prefer not to go out at all, sir, if you know what I mean, but I guess if it can't be helped, then fuck all let's take 'em with us." Markus said as Damien pulled out a second laspistol, and, wielding them akimbo, fired easily a dozen shots in the span of a couple seconds into the bodies of the ever increasing horde. Markus picked up another axe, and wielding his lasgun in one hand and his new axe in the other, chopped and shot his way through another half dozen beasts.

Suddenly, in the midst of the commotion, a beast that easily dwarfed all the previous ones leaped spectacularly through the air, a giant hissing mechanical arm, covered in blades where his right arm should have been, bearing down on the two of them.

_And just when we were finally realizing some of this potential…_a voice in Markus' head said. _Well damn…_

"SPACE MARINES! ATTACK!"

There was a blur in front of his eyes, and Markus blinked. In the millisecond that his eyes were closed, he wasn't sure what happened, the giant ork leaping at them had gaind a gash the size of a man running down its entire body, and the arm that had had Markus and Damien's names all over it was flying off in the opposite direction.

In front of him, towering over them, was a being easily eight feet tall. It's back was turned towards them, its backpack covered in ornamentation, but two vents on the left and right side near the top could still be seen, pumping out steam, working hard for the being in the suit. It spoke.

"You two, what are your names?" a voice said. It clearly came from the armor, and it was stern, but strong. It had a hint of a communication device to it, as whatever was communicating with them was inside the armor speaking out to them.

Damien spoke first. "Platoon Commander Damien Kaiser sir!" He looked at Markus.

"And Markus Atticus, sir!"

"We're with the 8th Correlian sir! You're the reinforcements they mentioned, sir?"

"That we are. You two did well to last as long as you did. Now both of you, back to the defensive line. Someone will be finding you shortly, and I'm sure we'll be meeting again." The figure charged out of the trench and forward, his blade shining in the sun. All across the line, large figures, clan in large armor, colored white, with pauldrons outlined in blue and filled in with yellow, slowly marched forward, pushing the beasts back. Large guns fired rounds into the still charging monsters, resulting in them exploding into a gory mess. To their left, a flame flew out from one of the warriors, covering a dozen of the monsters in roiling flame, as the creatures slowly fell to the ground in burning agony.

Walking backwards, still bewildered at what had just happened, Markus watched the beings dispatch the previously invincible horde with precision and skill that just shouldn't have been possible. "Who are those guys?" Markus asked. _I don't know, but damn, I wanna get in on whatever deal they have going, _the voice in Markus' head answered.

"You been living under a rock, Markus? They're the Lightning Templars chapter of Space Marines. Best of the best. I've seen holo-vids, but never in person...damn." The being that had saved them was out near the front of the line of marines. He quickly became surrounded by the beasts, but in an instant, all of the beasts surrounding him found themselves with wide slash wounds where their organs and appendages had previously occupied. Watching him instilled a sense of awe in Markus. The creatures would jump at the new warrior, their axes raised high in anticipation of falling into the warrior's body, but just as soon as they would come within half a dozen feat of the warrior, the blade the being carried would swing out impossibly fast, and cut the beasts. The movements were impossibly precise, and in each smooth motion another beast's death was added to the tally. The creature's bullets pattered helplessly against the warrior's armor, the few that actually managed to find their mark, that is.

Markus was in total awe. Damien had to pull him by his arm towards the base, such was his amazement. When he finally snapped out of his awe induced "coma," Markus turned and jogged towards the small base that was serving as the defensive line.

_Space Marines, eh? Maybe they have an opening. That looks like a lot of fun…_

Author Notes:

First jump into writing fanon, after years of coming up with stories in my head. This one obviously revolves around a guy named Marcus. This will probably be the first in a series around him, though how quickly things get put up I have no idea, and odds are I will jump around to other characters and chronology. By the way, for reference for those who follow the 40k universe, this take place in the early 900s of the 41st Millennium, so a little under one hundred years from the current date of 999.M41. The story revolves around the Lightning Templars Chapter of Space Marines, who, again for those with some background knowledge of 40k, exist out near the Eastern Fringe of the Galaxy in the Erindanus Sector. A lot of this will be fleshed out in later chapters/ stories. If there are critiques, I'd love to hear them.

Also, how well the fluff of this chapter and their exploits will mesh with the conventional wisdom of the Warhammer 40k universe I have no idea. If things start getting way out of hand, someone should probably tell me and slap me back into line. But I'm not there yet, I guess this is just a warning for future.

Thanks for reading, and critiques are always welcome.


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